The Museum That Disco Built

What's a museum? Literally, it's a place dedicated to the muses—the nine goddesses who, in Greek and Roman myth, preside over the arts and sciences. Well, we'd like to officially nominate a tenth muse to that pantheon, one already working magic in Miami: the wild and crazy goddess of disco music.

Let us explain: The Rubell was built by the sharp-eyed New York family of Donald and Mera Rubell. Don was an obstetrician, a successful one, but his buying power was boosted substantially by the estate of his brother, Steve, the groovy character who operated the disco of all discos, Studio 54. It's fitting that a fortune earned through capturing a generation's imagination would be spent on art. And not a few of the artists in the Rubell Collection—Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat—were regulars at the club.

After disco died, the family acquired this 45,000-square-foot warehouse in an un-glam Miami neighborhood. (The space had been a DEA storage facility—does it get any more Miami than that?) They did a colossal clean-up job, and today it's the roomy, laid-back home of what may be the best-edited collection of modern art in America. Inside, you don't hear a reverential hush; you hear laughter and the buzz of conversations energized by down-to-earth encounters with Kara Walker, Richard Prince, David Hammons, Neo Rauch... In other words, the Rubell is not the sort of museum where art goes to die. This is a place where art stays alive.

For more of the 10 most mind-blowing, energizing, unorthodox, and flat-out-cool places to experience art in America, check out the slideshow.